Copyrights

In an ongoing war between Viacom and YouTube, YouTube just won another major battle. The copyright infringement case was first filed back in 2007 in response to YouTube clips of Viacom’s television shows, including “South Park,” “SpongeBob SquarePants” and “The Daily Show with Jon Stewart.” In 2010, Judge Stanton for the Southern District of New

Back in the days of audio cassettes, music was routinely copied and shared with others but the quality of the copy was always poor. Now, with the advent of digital music, perfectly pristine copies of music can be shared, but an April 2013 court decision dealt a huge blow to the digital music secondhand market.

Kanye West, whether you like him or not, is one of the world’s most famous rappers. He is now also the target of a copyright infringement lawsuit based upon his number one hit song “Gold Digger,” despite the song having been released 7 years ago. Earlier this month, a case was filed in the Central

In 2009, a war broke out over who would be the rightful owner of such iconic comic book characters as Spiderman, The Fantastic Four, Thor, The Incredible Hulk, and The X-Men to name a few. The heirs of the late comic book artist Jack Kirby thought they could reclaim rights to Kirby’s creations, however, this

If I had six strikes when I was in little league I might actually have been able to scratch out a hit or two. However, under a new controversial agreement, copyright infringers have that many chances before they strike out. The new “six strikes” copyright alert system was launched in late February as a result

On April 1, 2013, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals wasn’t fooling when it affirmed a lower court decision ruling that Internet start-up Aereo can continue to stream live television to its subscribers through the Internet much to the chagrin of the television network plaintiffs. Aereo allows its subscribers to stream live television through its

The next time you copy and paste an image of the “Grumpy Cat” for a witty text message, remember it could be copyright infringement, and your cell phone company is not liable. On March 25, 2013, the Ninth Circuit affirmed a significant district court decision in the area of copyright law. In essence, the court

On Wednesday, March 20, the heirs to the Superman legacy took a major hit when a judge upheld the Ninth Circuit’s decision that a 2001 agreement with DC Comics is enforceable. In October 2001, the estate of Superman co-creator, Jerome Siegel, entered into an agreement with DC Comics to transfer all rights to Superman. After

Two years ago, in 2010, the Supreme Court was thrown for a loop in a battle between Costco and Omega over the sale of discounted watches. The copyright question involving the doctrine of fair use and gray market goods led the Court to a stalemate in 4-4 decision. On March 19, 2013, however, the Supreme

Google recently redesigned its Image Search interface to be faster, more reliable, and more user-friendly. Since launch, it has received critical acclaim from artists and webmasters alike. However, developing and emerging websites complain about the bandwidth consumed by images searches while not driving as much traffic to their websites. The question has become: is such